Seven Orlando area eateries madeUrbanspoon’s list of America’s 250 Most Popular High-End Restaurants list.

The restaurants include:

• The Table Orlando

• Deep Blu Seafood Grille

• Fogo de Chao

• Boma- Flavors of Africa

• The Capital Grille

• Johnnie’s Hideaway

• Texas de Brazil Churrascaria

Fogo de Chao is one of Orlando’s newest Brazilian steakhouses and opened March 15 on I-Drive. Click here to read a blog about Fogo de Chao by OBJ Reporter Anjali Fluker.

To compile the list, Urbanspoon considered more than 600,000 restaurants, millions of reviews, and a billion pageviews’ of user behavior, the restaurant data and recommendation service said in a blog post.

The resulting 250 restaurants received the most attention from food critics, bloggers and the dining public across Urbanspoon’s website and smartphone apps, Urbanspoon said.

No need to bring a bottle of wine, flowers or a side dish – just make reservations on their website, cough up $100 (per person, tax and gratuity included) and try not to get lost finding the frosted doors leading into the Table’s dining room. Upon entering one Saturday night, we were greeted by the gaze of about a dozen bubbly-sipping strangers assembled at various points next to the dominating marble table, all making a half-hearted effort to mingle with the other assembled guests. We ambled to the bar, got our welcome libation and joined the group just in time to enjoy hors d’oeuvres of sesame aged beef and curried hummus. The guests, mostly moneyed Bay Hill types, appeared eager to eat – a couple, in fact, had already staked claim to their seats.

At about 7:45, we took our seats under the spectacular chandelier and listened to chef Falsone and her business partner, Dominick Tardugno, introduce the evening’s courses and wine pairings. The smoked stuffed artichoke confounded a few diners at first, but once the proper eating method was grasped, not a leaf was left unsucked on the way to the heart. Just as impressive was the odd, intense and complex 2008 Scholium Project “The Prince in His Caves” sauvignon blanc. Peppery acqua pazza broth was a pleasant surprise in a bowl of flounder and Canaveral shrimp sitting atop corn-kernelled mashed potatoes. The verdicchio paired nicely, but a coupling of the fruit-forward 2008 Dinastia Vivanco tempranillo with smoky pork and tubular perciatelli pasta seemed off. Preceding dessert was a cheese course of goaty Truffle Tremor, a French double cream and balsamic BellaVitano that, at times, seemed at odds with the full-bodied Malbec. But all was forgotten after a bite of heavenly tiramisu drizzled with barrel-aged Manhattan caramel and served with a 2010 Villa Rosa moscato.

The guests were hardly raucous; they seemed more reserved and insular than we had expected. “That’s not normal,” Brassil confided to me as I sipped an espresso. “We often have to get guests to pipe down and eat.” This particular group dynamic may have lacked the proper chemistry, but when most of the guests had left, we had a blast chatting with Falsone, Tardugno and the wait staff and didn’t leave until 11 p.m. It was the first time that evening that we felt the mood take on that of a proper dinner party, and not a dinner for schmucks.

Loren Falsone and co-owner/husband Tyler Brassil each bring impressive resumes to Restaurant Row’s most exciting new dining concept. In 2000, Falsone was named one of Food & Wine’s Top Ten Chefs while she was owner of Empire Restaurant in Providence, R.I., which Condé Nast Traveler deemed one of the “top tables in the world” that year. She moved to Florida to become the executive chef at Seasons 52. Brassil opened 15 restaurants in his career before becoming a chef instructor at Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando, where Falsone also now teaches classes.

The idea for the Table coalesced around Valentine’s Day in 2009. Loving to throw lavish dinner parties but hating the expense, they wondered if they could charge money — maybe a $50 donation for a many-course dinner paired with wines? They took all the table in their house and put them end to end to form one long communal table. And people loved it.

Fast-forward a couple of years and the table in question is now a 22-foot by 5 1/2-foot table made of swirly Brazilian granite under a dramatic, dangly glass chandelier. It seats 22 people. Customers can reserve the entire space for special parties, or pay $100 for a set five-course meal, each course paired with wines, and enjoy a Friday or Saturday evening with a bunch of other people. Those people may be strangers at the beginning of the evening, but if our experience is any indication, by meals’ end they are friends (well, maybe the people way at the other end of the table are still just acquaintances).

Falsone is the main force in the kitchen, with a tremendous eye for unexpected but symbiotic pairings. Our meal began with a smoked “artichoke stuffed artichoke,” a puree of artichoke heart and acorn squash filling the center of a perfect braised artichoke, the leaves pulling out to be waggled in a perfect shallot and local herb vinaigrette. A bracing Domaine Michel Girard 2010 Sancerre disproved the old “artichokes and wine don’t marry” saw.

A fisherman friend goes out daily on Falsone’s behalf, hauling in whatever the day’s catch happens to be for her inspiration: on our visit, a black grouper capped with a puffy custard and paired with local greens, a crunchy/tangy celeriac salad and a flurry of shaved black truffle (this with a 2009 Oregon pinot from Expression 44, which nabbed a 92 from Wine Spectator). Courses and corresponding wines proceeded, with Falsone and Brassil explicating the food and Dominick Tardugno discussing the wines. Meanwhile, the young man on the left chatted about business trips to China with the older man opposite me; the family from Chicago debated the merits of the Chi-Town ‘burbs with my mom. In short, we were getting to know each other, the magical by-product of an enormously good meal.

The Table

You don’t have to worry about whether or not you’re going to get the best table when you visit Restaurant Row’s newest dining establishment, The Table. As the name suggests, there is only one. But what a table it is, twenty-two feet by five and a half feet. It seats 22, and looks as though it is in the dining room of someone’s grand home.

Notice I didn’t call The Table a restaurant. It prefers to be called a supper club, though that doesn’t really describe it very well, either. The Table is a dining experience, available for one seating per night, Fridays and Saturdays only. You may reserve the space for you and 21 of your friends, or you may join in as a party of one, two or more to fill in seats on a regular night. Think of it more as a chef’s table kind of experience.

The menu is set, although the chefs are happy to accommodate dietary restrictions, and usually features five courses, each paired with a wine. The price is set, too: $100 per person, inclusive of tax and gratuity, which is more than reasonable for the quality and the experience.

I attended a media dinner meant to showcase the venue. We sipped on Champagne and nibbled on passed hors d’oeuvres while waiting to be called to the table for seating.

Our first course featured king salmon on a frisee salad with a poached egg from Lake Meadow Naturals (the chef/owners, Tyler Brassil and Loren Falsone, endeavor to use local, sustainable and organic products as much as possible). The salmon was perfectly grilled and had the nicest char, but I really enjoyed the broken yolk of the egg serving as the salad’s dressing. A 2009 Bastianich Malvasia from Croatia accompanied.

Next came a roasted acorn squash crespelle, the Italian version of a crepe, filled with housemade “two-milk” ricotta, in a sweet corn veloute garnished with purple Peruvian potatoes and generous slices of black truffles. It was richness all around, but it was not overwhelming. The wine was the Scholium Project’s 2009 Riquewihr, Lost Slough Vineyards, from Fairfield, Calif.

Roasted local quail followed, served with apple and black mission fig and a wild mushroom ragu. And to top it off, a generous lobe of seared foie gras. I don’t often find quail worth the trouble — this one was. A 2008 Nebbiolo from Matteo Correggia was the paired wine.

I never thought I’d find a cheese course I couldn’t finish, but the samples of Camembert, Cabrales and Manchego were too big to eat. Hated leaving them, especially the gorgeously mottled Cabrales. Sater Vineyards 2008 North Valley wine provided  a satisfying quaff.

Needless to say, when dessert was served, I could only manage a bite. Well, maybe three. The peach cake was OK, but the barrel-aged caramel was amazing, and the coffee ice cream was all I needed to keep me awake the rest of the night.

The table of The Table is a beautiful slab of purple Brazilian granite that sits beneath a row of lights decorated with varying lengths of monkey-tail glass curlicues. Elegant draperies, fine art and a wet bar with an impressive wine rack of glowing resin rods add to the feel of being in a fine home.

Falsone is the former executive chef for Seasons 52 and was one of Food & Wine magazine’s top 10 new chefs in 2000. She and Brassil, who is also her husband, also teach at Orlando’s Le Cordon Bleu culinary academy.

It isn’t the place of a reviewer to be concerned about the tenability of a business, but I worry that this concept can be sustained with so few seatings each week. I suppose some of the costs are ameliorated by cooking classes and sharing the space — and the rent — with a caterer. And Brassil and Falsone have enough experience in the business to know what they’re doing. Sustainable is a current buzzword associated with food; I’d like to see it applied to the places that serve it, too.

The Table is at 8060 Via Dellagio Way, Orlando. It is open for dinner Friday and Saturday or by special arrangement. Here is a link to thetableorlando.com. The phone number is 407-900-3463.